If we may trust to the glimmering light which, resting for a moment, uncertain and confused, upon the reign of Cecrops, is swallowed up in all the darkness of fable during those of his reputed successors, it is to this apocryphal personage that we must refer the elements both of agriculture and law. He is said to have instructed the Athenians to till the land, and to watch the produce of the seasons; to have imported from Egypt the olive tree, for which the Attic soil was afterwards so celebrated, and even to have navigated to Sicily and to Africa for supplies of corn. That such advances, from a primitive and savage state, were not made in a single generation, is sufficiently clear. With more probability, Cecrops is reputed to have imposed upon the ignorance of his subjects and the license of his followers, the curb of impartial law, and to have founded a tribunal of justice (doubtless the sole one for all disputes), in which after-times imagined to trace the origin of the solemn Areopagus.[c] KING ÆGEUS The fortress, which Cecrops made his residence, was from his own name called Cecropia, and was peculiarly recommended to the patronage of the Egyptian goddess whom the Greeks worshipped by the name of Athene, and the Latins of Minerva. Many, induced by the neighbourhood of the port, and expecting security both from the fortress and from its tutelary deity, erected their habitations around the foot of the rock; and thus arose early a considerable town, which, from the name of the goddess, was called Athenai, or, as we after the French have corrupted it, Athens.